Quotes About Reform

There is this concept of politics as a dirty game. It's a difficult game, but it doesn't have to be dirty. I think this is what we need to bring to politics. I think politics around the world has very often been captured by big interests - 'lobbies' they call them in the States.

My hope is that we will turn Greece into maybe the most transparent country in the world with everything on the web.

The wheel of democracy turns slowly.

The failure of Lateran V was the prelude to the Reformation, which shattered the unity of the Christian West and set in motion the dynamics that eventually led to the European wars of religion. Failures of reform carry a high cost.

He was opposed to capital punishment—"institutionalized sadism," he termed it—and in favor of prison reforms that would emphasize rehabilitation. His opinions were generally conservative, however, and he did not subscribe to the fashionable view of the sixties that criminals were victims of society.

I guess it is a little disconcerting," she said evenly, "for you and the Committee on Constitutional Reform to have young people who value this country and who understand what made it strong. That will certainly make your task more difficult.

It usually takes 100 years to make a law, and then, after it's done its work, it usually takes 100 years to be rid of it.

The law must be stable and yet it must not stand still.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he's seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he knows he can't.

Reform must come from within, not from without. You cannot legislate for virtue.

A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival.

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

It is essential to the triumph of reform that it shall never succeed.

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.

It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.

All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.

A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power.

Revolutions are not made; they come.

All reformations seem formidable before they are attempted.

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform.